I'm sure it's a common frustration but I couldn't find an answer. I'm making white icons in Inkscape (with a transparent background) and I couldn't find a way to set up my document so that the screen's background is some other colour than white. Obviously white on white isn't easy to see!

I can obviously add a rectangle of any dark colour below my object and make sure to delete it when I export my icons, but it's quite tedious, and it causes me to accidentally select the background all the time.

Instead of setting the document properties to have a non-white background colour, you could add a coloured rectangle to a second layer underneath your drawing. This allows the background to be quickly switched between white and your chosen colour by setting the layer visibility.